Getting the Most Bang For Your Ad Buck: Micro-Targeting in the Digital Age
Until recently, Facebook/Meta analyzed user activity to take its best guess at each account’s political ideology along with many other factors like religion, race or ethnicity, and sexual orientation. This data was available for advertisers to use for targeting when setting up ad campaigns.
Ultimately the platform decided that some advertisers were abusing this feature and removed it. For a while, there were still workarounds (e.g., targeting people who liked the Bernie Sanders page to reach progressives) but those are no longer an option either.
While this change was made due to Facebook/Meta’s concerns about political discourse on their platforms, it has left many looking for other ways to reach their target audiences. Fortunately there are other solutions! One of the most exciting options is custom list building. Digital Advance has worked with numerous clients to build lists of the exact users that an organization would like to reach.
Usually in our line of work we don’t need to reach everyone in the US or even in Texas. Clients usually want to reach voters in certain districts who care about their issues. This signals that these people are engaged in the political process and will be more likely to get involved with their issue or take action (e.g., sign a petition, share a post, sign up for emails).
Let’s say your organization has decided to focus on Republican voters in four key senate districts. Rather than trying to educate all 30 million people in Texas, you’ve decided to focus on this smaller subset. This type of targeting allows clients to maximize their advertising budget so ads are only being seen by the people you want to reach.
Targeting can get even more granular than just district level. Here are a few recent examples we’ve built for clients:
Likely political donors
Voters who have participated in the last three primary elections
Republican voters in key districts
Environment-focused voters in key districts
Legislators, staffers, reporters, and influencers
Our lists are tied to the voter file but are large enough to meet privacy requirements and are always anonymized. These lists can be used for other platforms as well – not just Facebook/Meta. As long as users have an account, we can reach them, whether it is Twitter/X, LinkedIn, the display network, or more.
If you would like help building a custom list or would like to discuss ideas for audiences who would likely engage on your issue, please reach out!